At Front Row CRM we believe in the sales rep and built a CRM from the ground up as a mobile system. This allows the sales rep to complete and submit sales reports in less than 60 seconds from any mobile device, leaving more time for selling. We have added features to help the sales reps be more productive and improve compliance, including data and information retrieval, note review, location and directional maps, contact information, camera integration, sync with Outlook or Google PIM and more.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Do Your Employees Know What They're Talking About? (And What You Can Do About It)

Yesterday I went to a store that specializes in mattresses to
purchase a mattress pad. One of the three sales associates took me to
see the hypoallergenic pad I asked about, and on the packaging of the
display sample, I noted that it was available in the size I needed.
When I asked to order it, the woman helping me told me that it did not
come in the size I wanted. Pointing out that the label showed the
manufacturer indeed made that size, I was again met with denials by
another associate who could not find it in the computer. In a failed
attempt to make the sale, she suggested that the standard size would do
just fine because it was only "a few inches shorter." I was frustrated
by the associates' lack of information about the products and--after I
checked online that the right size did exist--I thought carefully about
the importance of knowledge in growing a business.

So if you have not thought about your knowledge management process lately, it's time to get on it. Here's what I mean.

Knowledge is king.
As business owners, it is our responsibility to be sure that anyone
who represents our companies is well-trained. Not one of the three
mattress associates I mentioned knew enough about the product to be
working in the store--and, as a result, the company lost a $150 sale.
Given the current state of the economy, businesses, especially small
ones, cannot afford to let that happen. You can have the nicest sales
people in the world, but if they don't know your product, they are
simply useless. For my company, this means an incoming rep will spend
weeks learning the products--ours first, then our competitors'. She
will be taught, quizzed, observed, and tested on these products. She
will be asked to write comparisons between our products and similar ones
available elsewhere. She will be asked to role play problem encounters
where using product knowledge is the only way to resolve the situation.
All of this will happen before she can ever speak to a customer.
Whether the new hire comes to us with "industry experience" or not,
there is no exception to this training. We ask her to start over and
learn everything from the ground up, so there are no gaps, no
misconceptions, and no misinformation. The reality is: the only way an
unknowledgeable rep makes it to a selling floor is if the business owner
has not made product education important enough in the training
process, or if he is not doing follow-up to make sure his reps use the
knowledge they're expected to learn.

It's not just what you know, but how well you know it.
Face it. The information age has changed the way we process
knowledge. We now rely heavily on technology to tell us what we know.
Unfortunately, the down side to this is that we often don't truly learn
information anymore. We read it, use it, and lose it. Take the
example of the sales associates at the mattress store. They insisted
that the product I wanted did not exist because it was not in their
computer system. At some point, someone probably showed them these
products and assumed they had learned them, but clearly that was not the
case. Reps should be monitored on a regular basis to guarantee that
they did not do a cram session during Product Knowledge 101 in order to
graduate to the selling floor--only to quickly forget all the
information they studied. It's every good business owner's
responsibility to constantly check in with her sales team to see how
employees use the instruction they have been given. I ask customers for
feedback on my reps, do frequent review sessions on important concepts,
and listen to calls in order to hear firsthand exactly how good a rep
is at conveying product information.

Learning never ends.
Any salesperson who does not actively try to learn more at all times
is not worth keeping. A great rep should be reading industry
publications, asking customers questions, keeping up with competitor
innovation, and integrating all that she learns into her daily
interactions. As business owners, it is in our best interest to inspire
and even incentivize this continued learning. When one of my reps
learns new information that could be useful to the company as whole, she
tells all our team members about it. If she wants to find out more
about a new tool or product, she is given the go-ahead to take a class,
do research, or just about anything else that will help her get the
knowledge she needs--even during company hours. At the end of the year,
the reps who get better bonuses and bigger raises are the ones who have
learned the most about our products, who have sought opportunities to
acquire more product knowledge, and who have questioned insistently.
So when you think about knowledge management and how your company
handles it, remember this: You have to demand the highest level of
knowledge from your salespeople, and the highest level of training and
encouragement, to make that happen.

About Front Row CRM

Front Row Solutions is an innovative CRM sales tool that utilizes sales reporting applications and maps to increase productivity and revenue. Sales will see an immediate benefit in commissions and ease of use. Managers see real time reports, statistics and activity that is meaningful. www.FrontRow-Solutions.com